


Bent

by Rileyspork



Category: A-Team (TV), A-Team - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-28
Updated: 2013-04-07
Packaged: 2017-12-06 19:52:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/739478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rileyspork/pseuds/Rileyspork
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Face gets hurt on a mission against a brutal mercenary organization, it has unexpected repercussions for Murdock's well-being. While continuing to battle the shadowy group that now has a personal vendetta against them, they revisit a future that would rather be forgotten, and stand at the beginning of a new chapter of their history. Takes place roughly Season 2-3, and goes a bit off script from there. Gen for the first 10,000+ words, and very mild slash after that. Brief coverage of posthumous Murdock/OMC.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Not Broken

**Author's Note:**

> I only started watching the A-team a few months ago, when I was going to a conference with my coworkers, and we decided to go to the conference's costume party as the "A+Team". Having never really watched it as a kid, I decided to brush up...and ended up really getting into it. This is my first fic in the fandom, and if I get anything wrong, please let me know!

Face buried his face in the back of Murdock’s shoulder, as the taller man carried him piggy back, slow over the rough ground, pushing through the thick underbrush. Hannibal looked behind, as he reached forward, to put a hand on the injured man’s shoulder, checking for any signs the enemy had caught up to their slow, painful progress. 

Gripping the torn fabric of Face’s suit, he tried to keep going, his own ankle swelling in his boot and hindering his speed. Murdock’s hat was starting to slide off, with Face’s head bumping against it. A few steps later, it fell to the ground. Murdock stepped over it, and kept going, without appearing to care. 

Face whimpered, quietly, tightening his grip on Murdock’s shoulders, “stop... s-stop...”

Murdock halted immediately, and Hannibal, rising after picking up the hat, helped him lower the injured man to the soft forest floor. Face curled, pale and drenched in sweat, breathing harsh and ragged. Murdock knelt over him, gripping the sides of his jacket, and turning him bodily onto his back. He cried out, weakly, at being jostled, and crunched handfuls of dry leaves into nothing in his fists, panting shallowly. 

Murdock moved to a point where he could lift Face’s upper body into his lap. From that angle, Hannibal could see the blood smearing Murdock’s side and back, obscuring the tiger. 

Hannibal knelt, and cut away Face’s shirt with his belt knife, so he could get at the injury. It wasn’t a bullet wound, as he had assumed, but a large, spreading contusion, with a deep laceration the middle. Face moaned, and clutched at Murdock’s sleeves, as the Captain’s hands rubbed his chest. 

“Easy, Faceman, I got you. How bad is it, Hannibal?”

Hannibal shook his head, still trying to answer that same question. Face lifted his head, and looked down at himself, then groaned, and dropped his head back against Murdock’s belly, face completely white. 

“It’s bad, but it doesn’t look fatal, as long as we get him to a doctor, and none of the intestines are cut. Only problem is, the closest doctor is going to be miles away...”

“Oh, good...” mumbled Face, “miles... okay, I’ll just jog on over there to the office, off this mountain...” 

He tried to sit up in jest, and but ended up exclaiming in pain, and falling back against Murdock again, “maybe not...”

“What happened, I didn’t see?”

“One of them hit me with a broken bat...sharp, I guess..”

“Hannibal, we can’t leave BA back there...” Murdock frowned, eyes fixed on his friend’s injury. 

“Go back for him. I’m not going anywhere. The worst that’ll happen is they’ll find me.”

“I’m not going to leave you alone. They might not want to take you alive.” Hannibal shook his head.

“Oh...right...” Face laughed, weakly, starting to get a little stronger for the rest, “I can walk, with help, I think.”

Hanibal nodded, doubtfully, “okay.”

Face looked horribly weak, and didn’t move like he had much strength left. He’d lost blood, but the flow had slowed, and the wound wasn’t too terribly deep, so a lot of it was probably just the pain. 

Murdock slipped out from under Face’s back, crouching beside the blond man, and pulling Face’s arm over his own shoulders, in preparation for lifting him to his feet. They would get somewhere safer, clean and bandage the wound as best they could, and then head back to the compound to get BA. Lifting him seemed to drain the color from his face entirely, and he looked like he nearly passed out right then and there. 

Murdock held him up, and walked slowly beside him, as he stumbled toward a flat, mossy rock, mostly clear of leaves and brush. He all but collapsed onto the crusty green surface, gasping and shaking, and starting to look a shade of green very similar to the yellowish dried-out moss he was lying atop. 

Up came his meager breakfast, two sausage links and some beans cooked over a small fire, and Murdock held him as he retched, holding out a canteen to rinse his mouth when he had deposited everything he had eaten onto the rock, though he continued heaving for several minutes after. 

Hannibal left him to rest for a little while, and set about tearing strips of a spare shirt from his pack into bandaging. When he looked back, Murdock looked almost as miserable as Face, holding his friend and gently finger combing the sweat-drenched blond hair out of the attractive features, as Face held on to Murdock’s other hand for dear life, mouth open in pain. 

Briefly, he considered finding a spot to hide him, and hurrying to the camp and back, but dismissed the thought immediately. Face would be defenseless, and they weren’t dealing with Decker. These were ruthless mercenary killers who had already murdered a woman in cold blood. 

“Murdock, get him on his back. I need to take another look.”

Murdock nodded, heaving his friend over. Face yelled. Murdock flinched visibly at the sound. Hannibal met Murdock’s eyes, and the Captain grimly took one of the fabric strips Hannibal had torn, cradling Face’s head with one hand, as he stuffed the strip into his friend’s mouth with the other. 

Face sobbed, through the gag, as Hannibal began to check the laceration more carefully, cleaning his hand as best he could with brandy out of the pack before inserting them. The screams that followed were quieter than the first, thanks to the wad of former shirt, but his body jerked and he clenched his hands into fists so tightly his palms began to bleed where his nails dug into the skin. Murdock gripped his wrists, and he opened his hands, obedient to his friend’s silent direction. Murdock pressed his hands to the moss, blood seeping around entwined fingers. 

Hannibal only peripherally noticed this, as his attention was focussed mostly on the wound. There were some bits of wood, most of which were loose, and which Hannibal removed, but a few were clearly deep into the muscle. Thankfully, none had gone into his guts. He gently removed the ones that were lodged in, Face crying out through the fabric. 

Once Hannibal had bandaged the wound, Murdock gently pulled the gag from his exhausted friend’s mouth, and helped him rinse again, this time with a little brandy mixed in to help with the foul taste of the sweaty cloth. 

Face moaned, quietly, not really with them, and Murdock shook him until Face managed to meet Murdock’s gaze, briefly, before checking out again. 

There was no way they were moving until Face had had time to recover, so Hannibal got to his feet, wincing as his ankle throbbed, “Murdock, look after him, I’ll go scout the area, make sure they aren’t following our trail.”

Murdock nodded, pulling his gun. Face seemed to be almost passed out from the pain, and barely opened his eyes, as Murdock lifted his head to slip the blood-smeared leather bomber under it, then closed them again, as Murdock laid down beside him, putting a protective arm across his chest, the gun clutched tightly in his hand, one knee drawn up to rest against Face’s hip. 

 

He didn’t see any sign of the enemy having followed them. Just their own tracks, which he did his best to cover, as he returned to the rock, moving silently through the woods. He stopped, noticing movement ahead. But it was just Murdock, he realized, getting to his feet atop the rock. 

Frowning at Murdock exposing himself like that, he started to hurry forward to urge Murdock to get down, but he stopped before he’d moved more than a step. Murdock was staring up at the trees, his usually warm, wide-open brown eyes overbright and narrow, his mouth set.

That was a look that he hadn’t seen often, even during the war, before Murdock had cracked. The crazy act hadn’t come out of nowhere, Murdock had had a history of acting the dim goofball since Hannibal had known him, he’d just taken it a lot farther in recent years. 

This was no goofball, and no halfwit. Sharp, focused intelligence and cold, distant anger were the only things Hannibal saw right then. He smiled. This would be an interesting mission. Maybe a more reckless one, for the mood Murdock was in, but definitely interesting. 

Murdock turned, looking right at Hannibal, though he hadn’t made a sound. Hannibal stepped out, “how is he?”

Face sat up, though it was clearly excruciating, face white, “better.”

Hannibal nodded, surprised that Murdock didn’t immediately camouflage the change in his demeanor, as he turned back to Face. Face didn’t seem to notice, too busy trying to get to his feet. Murdock lifted him bodily upright, and slung his friend’s arm across his shoulders again, smiling once more, “and the bold knight mounts his faithful steed...”

“Uh-huh. If you were a steed, we’d be there by now...”

Face definitely seemed better for the rudimentary treatment–or at least snarkier–as they headed on, back into the deep woods, towards the compound, but he still wasn’t able to more than shuffle, Murdock neighing beside him. 

Their progress was slow, but steady. Murdock supported as much of Face’s weight as he could, and Face managed to keep down some strips of dried beef, enough to give him a little bit of strength back to stagger forward. They were horrendously loud, and left a trail through the brush practically big enough for the van to traverse, but at least they were moving. 

Murdock kept up a running commentary on the plants they passed, and Face replied with single syllable, disinterested answers. Hannibal was suspicious of the normality, given what he’d seen of Murdock’s mood, earlier, but let it go without comment. Maybe he had been wrong, and Murdock had just been upset and trying to hide it. 

Resting often, they were within earshot of the main road by sundown. They found an abandoned trailer, rotting away in sparse trees off a back road, slowly being swallowed back up by nature. It didn’t look exactly safe, but it would have to do for the night, as there was only dim red light left in the sky. 

The floor creaked loudly, as Face fell towards a rusty metal chair, dripping sweat from the effort he’d put in over the last hour of travel, trying to get to shelter before full dark. Murdock knelt, and undid the bandage, quickly and efficiently, joking the whole time. Hannibal knelt beside him, awkward with his swollen ankle, and shone a flashlight on the wound in the shadowy dark of the decrepit trailer. 

The bruising had darkened, and the clotting had cracked, was oozing blood onto the skin around it, and soaking into the bandaging. Face slumped in the chair, chin on his chest. Once they had finished rebandaging, Murdock and Hannibal lifted the nearly unconscious lieutenant to a not too rotten section of floor, laying him in what they hoped was a comfortable position. On the other hand, he seemed past caring. 

 

Hannibal was on watch outside the trailer, currently sitting on the front steps, when he heard something off in the woods, behind the structure, if it could be called that. He stood, unlit cigar clenched in his teeth, and limped on a stiff, painful ankle around back. There was nothing there, even as he shone the flashlight. He turned, and went back to the front, poking his head in the door to check on Face and Murdock.

Face looked fine, albeit a bit pale, but that could have just been the harsh light of the flashlight. Something scurried out of one of the cabinets, the door hanging down from one hinge, and he followed it with the beam. A rat. He shook his head, and looked to Murdock....who wasn’t there. Instead, there was a note, scribbled on an old receipt. 

Murdock must have known they couldn’t follow him in time to do anything, not with their combined injuries, and he hadn’t wanted them to. He wanted Face as far from danger as possible, and knew Hannibal wouldn’t be able to move the lieutenant with his ankle like it was.

Hannibal was coming to the conclusion that he didn’t like this calculating, sneaky Murdock. Unpredictable was fine, and expected, but he had never actively subverted a plan like this before.

Hannibal went back outside, and sat down again, lighting his cigar, and sighing. He would wake Face, and see if they could get moving, and maybe make it there in time to help. But first he would need a stick, or something to lean on, if he was going to support Face’s weight, as well as his own...

 

Turning from sawing a stick to an appropriate length, as he heard a crunch in the distance, he sensed rather than saw the man in the woods. Moving as fast as he could back to the trailer, he squinted, trying to make out what was happening in the grey light before the sun truly started to rise, but after the stars were all out. A gun fired, and he pushed faster, to get there in time. Face was on the ground, on top of a man, a gun in his hand, the muzzle pressed to the man’s chin. His bandage was dripping blood. 

It was definitely one of the mercenaries, but he wasn’t carrying any heavy weaponry, just a pair of binoculars and a .45. Hannibal cocked his gun. This guy was probably just a scout, they were likely to be attacked any–

The blow came before he heard the footsteps, the cigar slipping from between his teeth and falling to the forest floor, as he crumpled. 

 

Waking, he found himself staring up at a tin roof leaking light through a multitude of holes and cracks. Turning, he saw Face sitting up, against the cinderblock wall. He looked okay, albeit still pale. Someone had replaced the soaked bandages. 

“You’re awake.”

“Yeah...what happened?”

“They snuck up on us...knocked you out, didn’t bother with me. Just put a bag over my head and tossed me in a truck next to you. Apparently I’m not fit enough to be a threat at the moment.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I don’t know what they did with Murdock. He wasn’t in the truck...I didn’t see him.”

Hannibal looked sharply at the young man, in response to the small, almost unnoticeable note of fear in the Lieutenant’s voice. 

“He left before they came. Left a note. Apparently he decided to take out this whole compound on his own, and get BA back...speaking of, did you see BA?”

Face shook his head, “they only took the bag off in here.”

“Any clue as to what part of the compound we’re in?”

“I smelled manure right before we reached this shed...that’s about it.”

Hannibal nodded, leaning forward to undo the laces on his boot. His ankle was swollen to almost twice its normal size, and the boot was agonizing. 

“What’s going on with you and Murdock?”

Face looked surprised, “what?”

“He’s never acted like this before.”

Face looked at the ground, then up again, “Someone from the VA called me, or, called Dr. Stern, anyway, the alias I’ve been using to get him out the last couple months. He was having nightmares, only nobody could get him to wake up. I got there...he was screaming.”

Face shook his head, and looked down again, “it was like when he first had to go there. I hadn’t seen him like that in eight years. It was right after that mission when I got knocked out, by the little lady with the two-by-four?”

Hannibal nodded, “a stellar moment in your combat record...”

Face rolled his eyes, “anyway, it was right after that. Once we got him to wake up, he wouldn’t let go of me, for anything. I don’t know what it was, but something set him off, the last time I was hurt.”

Hannibal nodded, without replying.

What would Murdock do? Where would he start? He would need a distraction... and did he know they were here, or would he go back to the trailer? Or their emergency rendevous point?

He smelled smoke. Carefully, he pulled himself to his feet on the wall, and climbed painfully up onto a box, to look out the sole small window in the shack. There was dark smoke rising over the woods in the distance, and coming closer, blown on the wind. He could just see tongues of flame, beginning to swallow trees, marching onwards in the direction of the breeze. 

That would be Murdock’s distraction, whether he had created it or not. When it reached the compound, whatever he was planning would go into action.

Murdock was smart...smarter than Hannibal, and smarter than just about anyone Hannibal had ever met. Just because it was a bit sporadic and hidden under layers of crazy and pretending to be crazy didn’t mean there wasn’t a chance he could be scarily effective. It came out in his piloting skills, and the languages he spoke, and the times he had consulted for the CIA...but how would it come out, now? 

Hannibal sat back down. Nothing would happen until the fire reached the compound. He had time to work on a plan of his own. And they were locked in a storage shed. There was bound to be something they could use. 

 

Twenty minutes later, the door burst open. Face and Hannibal were ready with the bed-spring slingshot, but didn’t let it fire. It was BA, and Murdock behind him. BA unhooked the wires, and Hannibal let go, once he could do so without sending the fire extinguisher flying across the room. 

“Dang fool nearly got me killed.”

“Ah, come on, BA, it wasn’t that close...” wheedled Murdock, going immediately to Face’s side. 

He looked back to normal. Hannibal knew better than to trust it, but, then again, Face was close to safe, now, not in more danger than on any other mission, since his injuries had proved to be painful, but not immediately life threatening. 

He would have to have a talk with Murdock, about something like this never happening again. But not right now. 

Hannibal leaned on BA, as Murdock helped Face towards the door behind them. 

The compound was devastated, and not by the forest fire raging behind them. Murdock looked at the fires, ignoring the remains of leveled buildings, and, nearby one melted truck. 

“That’s really a shame. We should try and stop that fire, Hannibal,” murmured Murdock, as Face leaned against him. 

“You didn’t start it?”

“No, I was just going to blow up the manure pile, as a distraction. Good thing I didn’t, though, or else BA wouldn’t have been able to tell me you two were here before the explosion had taken out that shed, with you in it.”

BA nodded , “I saw those mudsuckers bringing you in.”

“Murdock, that’s why you shouldn't have gone off alone.”

Murdock stopped, for a moment, then swallowed, and nodded. “I know.”

Face groaned, pained and exhausted, and in a bad mood, “can we just get out of here, now?”

Murdock nodded again, “this way, I left one of the trucks functioning. Just have to put the battery back in, took it out so they couldn’t use it.”

One did seem to be the number he had left without some kind of disabling damage. The whole compound looked like it had been evacuated on foot. Uneasy about Murdock’s rash actions, the sheer mass of destruction he had brought down mercenary’s compound was almost worth it. Something told Hannibal they wouldn’t be up to much for a while, their entire infrastructure and probably most of their supplies had been taken out overnight.

Murdock was still looking at the hills, alight with flame, licking at the edges of the already smoldering compound. He looked back at a semi-collapsed barn. 

“What is it, Captain?” asked Hannibal.

Murdock turned to him, “there was a chopper in there. I took it out...but maybe me and BA can get it running again, and get a head start on helping the forest service put out that fire.”

Hannibal looked at Face, who shrugged, and then at BA, who glared, “I’m not going in any helicopter.”

“Nobody’s asking you to, BA. Just help Murdock fix it.”

BA nodded, and, after Murdock eased Face to sit atop the concrete step to the storage shed, followed the Captain towards the barn. 

Face just sat, hand pressed to his bandages, looking around at the collapsed buildings, “maybe we should let him loose more often.”

“That would be if you were expecting him to be predictable in some way.”

Face was silent, for a moment, then chuckled, winced violently, and rested his elbow on his thigh, watching BA brandish a wrench at a giggling Murdock.

Fifteen minutes later, Murdock had taken off with BA drooling in the back of the chopper next to Face, who’d had too much trouble getting up into the helicopter to make it onto the seat, Hannibal sitting shotgun. What had been the top of a water tower hung down, a large hole punched in the bottom, so it drained down beneath the chopper’s path. 

Hannibal leaned down, to replace the boot on his right foot, despite the swelling. He heard, rather than saw, what happened next. The noise of an approaching something, and then a boom that rocked the chopper, and sent it spinning. 

“Tail roter’s on fire...Face, tie yourself and BA to something, we’re going down.”

Hannibal looked behind, at Face trying to heave the large man towards Hannibal’s seat, to tie him to the back of it with cargo straps. Hannibal reached back, and helped move him, pulling on BA’s wrists. 

“I got him, get yourself secure.”

Face nodded, and set about tangling himself in the cargo straps near the back of the chopper. 

Down they went, spinning and dropping sporadically, as Murdock fought the failing controls. They didn’t quite make it past the edge of the fire, before they hit the burning trees, and caught there. A moment later, they broke free, the charred, weakened trunks giving way, and the chopper landed on top of the still semi-full water tank, tipping forward until the nose was touching the ground, and the tail was nearly vertical in the air. 

Murdock released his seatbelt immediately, climbing upwards to check on BA, and then the rest of the way up to Face, who was struggling out of his makeshift harness. Murdock caught him, as Face worked free of the straps, falling towards the seats. They both slid back to the nose, ending up against the back of the pilot’s seat. 

The air inside was starting to heat up. The fire was mostly out directly around where they had landed, probably partially due to the water that had fallen during their descent, but they could still barely see or breathe, for the rolling smoke. 

Hannibal turned back to look at the other three again. Face was dead white, clutching belly with one hand, as he held on to Murdock with the other, but he didn’t look like he had suffered any further injuries. Murdock left his side, climbing back up to the tail, where flames were starting to lick through a hole in the side of the chopper. He withdrew a small stick from his jacket pocket, held it to the flames, and then slid back down to his friend, waggling the white sparkler in front of him, “look, Face...it’s like the Fourth of July!”

Hannibal smiled, and climbed off his seat, leaving his boot behind, to start untying BA. 

The flames were starting to come close again, the water-soaked ground steaming as they approached. Hannibal slid the door open, pushed BA out, and then turned back to Face and Murdock, as Murdock helped Face drag himself painfully to the door. On the blackened ground below, BA moaned, beginning to wake up. 

“What the hell!”

“Start moving, BA.”

Murdock jumped down, and backed up to the floor of the chopper, so that Face could climb onto his back. Hannibal grabbed at branches and trunks as they hurried out, coughing from the smoke, eyes stinging, shoes singed by coals and active flames. His boot-less sock caught on fire twice, but mercifully went out with the next step. 

He heard a sound behind him, wondered if it was Face throwing up again, but ignored it, and kept pressing forward. 

 

By the time they made it to green, smoky woods, with leaves still on bushes, BA was wheezing, and Face was barely with them, his face mushed in Murdock’s neck. Murdock looked exhausted, and he had what had previously been Face’s stomach contents smeared on the shoulder of his jacket, fresh blood on top of what was crusted on the leather from that morning. 

They collapsed, and Hannibal reached, removing the charcoal sock from his burned, swollen foot. He turned around, and watched BA help Murdock set Face on the ground, gripping under his armpits and lifting him off the pilot’s back, as Murdock knelt, gently lowering Face’s legs. 

They arranged him on his side, and Murdock sat by his head, looking at Hannibal directly. 

Hannibal ignored the look, and turned to BA, “you and Murdock find a water source. I’ll stay here with Face. Come back as soon as you locate one, and we’ll move again.”

BA nodded, gripped Murdock’s sleeve, and dragged him on. 

Hannibal scooted to sit in spot Murdock had vacated, gripping Face’s shoulder, “you with me?”

Face opened his eyes, blearily, and nodded, “think I passed out for a minute. Sorry, Hannibal.”

“Don’t worry about it. Rest for now.”

“You look like you’ve got something else to say besides telling me to rest.”

“I guess I’ve got a question.”

“It doesn't hurt as much, now. I'm just really light-headed.”

“That’s not the question. Do you think Murdock is going to make it through this?”

He stopped, sighed, coughed, and laid his head on the ground, looking up at Hannibal with puffy, smoke-irritated blue eyes, his nostrils smeared with soot from wiping them on the back of his hand, “I think he won't let himself not make it through the mission. It's what'll happen after we're safe that worries me.”

 

Hannibal leaned on Murdock, as the made their way through the woods, towards the river they had found. Face was on BA’s back. He did seem to be doing better, was just too worn out to walk as Murdock was too worn out to carry him easily. 

“Colonel?”

“Yeah, Captain?” 

BA had stopped a few paces behind, Face readjusting his grip around the absurd amount of gold, letting Murdock speak in private for a moment, “I’m sorry I almost blew you up.”

 

The camp they made was actually fairly sheltered, against the growing wind and dropping temperatures, in a hollow left by a fallen tree pulling up its roots, thirty paces from the river. Hannibal sat in the bottom, Face curled up pretty much in his lap, as BA and Murdock collected tubers and firewood for the night. 

When they settled in, Murdock sat shivering to one side, staring up at the sky, until BA cuffed him around the shoulder, and dragged him until his head rested against BA’s stomach, and an arm was stretched across the heavier man’s hips, “you’re gonna freeze, fool.” 

In the morning, they took some time to plan. Face didn’t really join in, he was starting to run a fever, and was in a lot of pain. He laid in the soft, churned up dirt, arms around his middle, breathing heavily, face in his shoulder to muffle little gasps and almost-whimpers that seemed to be slipping out despite his best efforts. 

From what Murdock had seen climbing a tree on the hill rising above the river, they had another two days of slow, arduous hiking to get out of the woods. 

 

The second night, Face slipped, going down into the sheltered area beneath some projecting rocks, and Hannibal was fairly certain he wasn’t the only one who felt nauseous at the scream dying into long, desperate moans and soft, drawn out sobs. Murdock and BA both looked pale, as they climbed down to help, though BA looked more angry, Murdock just stricken and sick. 

 

They managed to hitch a ride, fifthly and bedraggled as they were, when they finally reached the road. An older man in a decrepit pickup was their rescuer, and he laughed when they expressed surprised that he had stopped, answering simply with, “I’ve looked worse.”

 

Hannibal pushed through the door, into the waiting room, and looked around for the other two members of his team. He found them on the floor, in the corner of the room. BA sat against the wall, Murdock face down in his lap. 

“Get this sucker off me.”

Hannibal ignored the whispered, angry command, deferring to BA’s hand rubbing in a slow, repetitive path over Murdock’s back as the actual indicator of BA’s attitude to his new role as his teammate’s pillow. Hannibal bent down, moving Murdock’s jacket, hat, and an Etch-a-sketch that must have come from the box of children’s toys in the middle of the room. A cartoon character he only vaguely recognized had been reproduced in the aluminum powder, and he was careful not to shift it and erase the drawing. 

He sat down in the space he had cleared, crossing his legs, and leaning an elbow on his right knee, his chin on his palm, “Face is going to be fine. There’s a little bit of infection, but antibiotics should clear it up. His ribs are bruised, one’s cracked.”

BA nodded, and Hannibal didn’t comment on the fact a large, bejeweled hand was now absently combing through Murdock’s hair.

“He’s going to be slow, though. Depending on how he is after the doctors finish, he’s going to be in a lot of pain for a while, and have trouble moving. And I can’t imagine the LPA is going to take what Murdock did without retaliation.”

“So what do we do?”

“Keep Face safe, and keep a sharp eye out for trouble. Not much else we can do, for now.”

BA looked down at Murdock, scowled, but didn’t stop petting him, and looked back up at Hannibal, grinning, “was worth it.”

Hannibal smiled, “it was.”

 

“Hannibal?”

Hannibal sat up, in the stiff, uncomfortable chair in the hospital room, “hey, Face. How you feeling?”

Face shifted in the hospital bed, so that he was a little bit more upright, and shrugged, “kinda hurts.”

Hannibal nodded, “yeah, it’s probably going to do that for a while. Murdock and BA got the van, we can head out as soon as you’re ready, the doctor cleared you while you were asleep.”

“Okay.”

Face got up, slowly, gingerly. He was panting shallowly by the time he was upright. 

 

Hannibal walked out of the hospital room, Face behind him, slowly walking forward, bracing himself against the wall. BA was waiting out in the hall, but Hannibal didn’t see Murdock. 

He raised his eyebrows at BA, who jerked his thumb around the corner. Hannibal went to investigate, and found Murdock sitting on the floor in the hallway, a nurse bending down over him, as he worked the knobs on the Etch-a-sketch, “and he’s got big, floppy ears, and his tail never stops wagging, ‘cept when somebody’s hurt...”

Hannibal crouched on Murdock’s other side, “drawing Billy?”

Murdock nodded, and flashed a big smile at Hannibal and the lady nurse. She smiled back, “what color are his eyes?”

“Uh, hard to tell.”

Hannibal looked up, as footsteps approached. He fought, the hands that gripped him. Murdock was yelling. They grabbed the nurse. He and Murdock stopped, dropping everything but the Etch-a-sketch, Murdock hugging it to his side with his elbow, as he lifted his hands. 

When they went to take it, he started yelling, and didn’t stop until they gave it back, looking at each other in confusion. 

 

Murdock moaned, turning his head from side to side, the blood running from the cut on the side of his head caking with dust and grime from the dirty floor, the water dripping from his torso darkening the rough concrete. One cheek looked swollen. 

“Murdock?”

He opened bleary brown eyes, though it seemed to be a struggle for him to focus them, “Face?”

“Sorry, H.M., it’s Hannibal.”

“Oh, heeeeey Colonel...”

“Hey, Murdock. You with me?”

“Yeaaah, Hannibal. I’m ‘ere.”

Murdock rolled onto his side, into the light coming through the window in the cell door. Hannibal could see the burns from electrocution on his chest and arms, the skin of his wrists torn through, leaving a deep, bloody interruption in the skin. He shivered, and curled a little bit in on himself. 

Hannibal got to his feet, and retrieved the bedragled leather jacket from the corner. There was a narrow, white-coated wire poking through the fabric inner lining. One of Murdock’s sparlkers. He pushed it back in, and covered Murdock with the coat. 

Murdock smiled, worked his mouth for a moment, and pulled out a large puff of steel wool, “got hungry. Hard to chew, though.”

They had probably used the wool as the electrocution contact. He had to smile a little at the idea of the jaundiced interrogator’s face when Murdock started eating the torture device. 

Hannibal adjusted the jacket, tucking it around Murdock’s increasingly bony shoulders. The days of torture and little food were taking their toll. 

Murdock’s eyes widened, and he pushed at the jacket, clumsily, rolling over, away. Hannibal pulled it off the panicked pilot, hurriedly, “what’s wrong? Murdock?”

“Blood.”

Hannibal looked down. There were bloodstains, still, but he’d cleaned most of it off in the hospital. He sniffed. It did still smell like blood, though, and stomach acid. 

“Okay. I’m putting it over here, alright?”

Murdock nodded, but he seemed a thousand miles away, eyes wide and fixed. 

“What are you seeing?”

“Just like Face, Hannibal. Bleeding, dying, blood everywhere. Slow, dying slow. The smell, everyone was vomiting...Infection, dehydration, emesis, hypovolvmic shock... forty-eight hours, fifty...”

“Face isn’t dying. He got to a hospital, he’s fine.”

“They did, though. They died. All of them, but me. Smelled the same... acid, and rotting, and blood...”

Murdock met Hannibal’s eyes, mouth open slightly, trembling, “you never get over that smell.”

Hannibal sat down beside him, pulling the younger man into his lap, “who died?”

“Them...the men... Carlo...even Billy. He died, Colonel.”

“...the dog? That Billy?”

“I killed’m all... they all...”

He gasped, shuddering, “lying all over the jungle, I couldn’t even move’m... Carlo died next to me, big branch in his gut...he pulled it out, died in a minute, staring, blood spraying all over him ’n me..’n Billy never stopped lookin’ at me, with them eyes on wet red string...I can’t even remember what they looked like before...just...hangin’...head with somethin’ stuck in it...he never knew what I did...never knew I killed ‘im...but kept lookin’...”

The crash. A year before Hannibal had met him, he had been flying a medivac chopper. He only went on to combat flights under Hannibal’s command, after he was downed by rocket fire. 

Between the torture, and Face being injured, the Captain’s grip on the here and now was starting to slip a lot more seriously. 

Hannibal stayed silent, and just held his pilot, as Murock sobbed. After a minute, he reached, and handed Murdock the Etch-a-sketch. He hadn’t stopped obsessing over the toy, for whatever reason, to the point where their captors had let him keep it just to shut him up. 

Hannibal looked up at the ceiling of the tiny cell. 

He needed a plan, fast. Murdock wouldn’t survive another week of this. 

He needed a plan. 

 

The door to the cell opened. The jauncidced man and the bearded one dragged Murdock in, by his arms, which were bound together tightly, and dumped him on the concrete, with an audible crack of bone on stone, as his head hit the floor. Hannibal got to his feet, “what did you do?”

“He was not cooperating. We taught him the importance of obedience.”

Hannibal glared, until they left, then crouched beside the Captain. 

Murdock’s body was covered in fresh burns, but this time they didn’t look electrical. It looked like they had cut him, and then seared the wounds closed, multiple times over. 

“Murdock?”

“Khuôn mat ban là mot con vit.”

“What about ducks?”

Murdock moaned, and pushed with his feet, until he managed to turn onto his side. 

Then he stuck his hand in his mouth, and started to gag. Hannibal tried to stop him, but he fought with a surprising amount of strength, and before long, he was choking, instead of gagging. Hannibal forced his mouth open, saw something stuck in the back of his throat, as his brown eyes rolled, panicked. 

Two heimlich thrusts later, the object shot a few feet out of Murdock’s mouth, skittered to a halt, and Murdock collapsed, gasping and beginning to sob. 

Hannibal looked. 

A small engraved lighter, scratched by its path across the concrete. 

Hannibal stared at it, for a minute. Then at the jacket, containing at least one magnesium sparkler, the Etch-a-sketch filled with aluminum powder, and the pile of rust that had previously been steel wool bitten off the electrical contacts over three weeks of torture. 

He knelt beside his pilot, and pulled Murdock into his lap, starting to work the bonds off his bleeding wrists, “you with me, Captain?”

“Dinh viec cháy...toi xin....”

“I don’t remember that much Vietnamese, Murdock. Try English...or...something else.”

“Watashi wa itami de gozen.”

“Okay...”

Murdock turned his head, and opened his eyes, staring at Hannibal. 

“Can you hear me, H.M.?”

“H.M.?” a small, uncertain voice. 

“Captain James Murdock. Can you hear me?”

“‘m just’a S’c’n L-T...”

“What?”

“Second Lieutenant,” answered Murdock, thickly, “not Captain.”

“You haven’t been a second lieutenant in almost fifteen years. Look at me.”

Murdock did look, staring up at him blankly. 

“You held out through torture, to get us what we needed to escape. You can hang on enough to get out.”

“...Don’t wann’o.”

“Does the name Templeton Peck mean anything to you, Murdock?”

There. Something. A flash. Murdock. 

It was enough. 

Hannibal gently eased the pilot out of his lap, and went to the corner, to mix the thermite that would melt straight through the hinges on their cell door. Behind him, as he worked, he could hear soft, swallowed sounds, Murdock suffering and confused. He worked faster. 

 

Hannibal swung the stolen truck around the corner so fast the back tires slid around the bend, more than turned it. Murdock was buckled in beside him, obsessively changing the radio station, even as they careened off road, swerving widely through risky terrain to hold off their pursuers. 

“What are you doing?” asked Hannibal, as they reached a flat, though rocky stretch, and gunned it. 

“The Detective Squiggle show. It’s starting in three minutes.”

They burst out onto the highway, and sped up to eighty. Murdock leaned over, and stared out the window, like they were on a leisurely drive in the country, body thunking against the side door each time they swerved. 

Hannibal dragged him back into the more sheltered parts of the car, and looked in the rearview. Three black trucks had pulled on behind them, were gaining. He clenched a cigar he’d stolen as they fled between his teeth, the sweet, creamy spice of the mild tobacco not quite bold enough for his taste.

Flashing lights ahead. He barreled through. They were behind, the black trucks mixed in, seven or eight vehicles chasing them, as they hit the borders of the city. 

Out of nowhere, a white corvette flashed past. Hannibal turned to follow it, around a tight corner, skidding, almost hitting a lamppost, a newspaper stand, a hot dog cart...

And then down, into a parking garage, a roll-up steel door shutting right behind them. 

He got out, gun drawn. Face opened the car door, leaning against the frame with one hand, as he grinned. 

“Police scanners are just so useful, aren’t they...”

Hannibal grinned, and turned back in the dim light, to look at Murdock. He was staring out the window at Face, eyes wide. 

“You with us, Captain?”

Murdock looked at Hannibal, “yessir.”

He stopped, frowned, then shook his head, “I think.”

“You recognize him?”

Murdock nodded, slowly. 

“You know who I am, who BA is?”

Murdock nodded. 

“Then that’s good enough. Come on.”

Murock slowly climbed out of the truck, through he almost collapsed as soon as he was on his feet. 

“Where’s BA?” Hannibal asked of Face. 

“Setting up a few false leads for them to buy us time. Murdock, are you okay? You aren’t looking so hot.”

Murdock paused, for a long moment, then shrugged, “yeah. Just a little bent. Not broken. And me’n Billy are real glad to see you, Face.”

“Okay. It’s not like I was going anywhere...”

Murdock nodded, and wobbled his way over to hug his friend, squeezing a loud, pained grunt out of the slightly shorter man. 

 

Hannibal ducked through the door of the warehouse they where sheltering in. Standing just inside, he waited to drip off, a puddle of rainwater forming at his feet, as he looked around. Face was working on forging a document, sitting on a rolly chair with a broken wheel, Murdock’s jacket spread across his lap, under the board he was using as a lap desk. BA was at the van, working on the engine. 

Hannibal frowned, “where’s Murdock?”

BA looked up, and waved a wrench at the sleeping bags spread out in the opposite corner, but stopped halfway through the gesture, when he saw that Murdock wasn’t there. 

Hannibal went back to the door, walking around the building. After a moment, BA joined him, holding a trashbag up over his head as a makeshift umbrella. 

Around the corner, they found him, sitting on the ground, shivering and soaked to the bone. He smiled, when he saw them, “heeeello.”

“Murdock, come back inside.”

Murdock’s face dropped, a little, “can’t. There’s no air inside.”

Hannibal crouched beside him, “it’s too cold for you to stay out here and get wet.”

“I’m fine,” Murdock grinned, but it was spoiled slightly by his teeth chattering violently. 

Hannibal sighed, “if we park the van out here, will you stay in that?”

Murdock shook his head. 

Hannibal frowned. Murdock was pale, and there were nail marks in his palms, his lips a little redder than usual, like he’d been biting them. There were also pink stains on his t-shirt, where his wounds had been washed open. 

Behind, slow, slightly uneven footsetps approached, and Hannibal glanced back, to see Face coming up, in a blue slicker, holding a space blanket and a raincoat. He reached them, sat down in the mud with a grunt, and handed Murdock the jacket, “put this on.’

Murdock did, slowly. Face scooted closer to him, leaned against the wall beside him, and covered them both with the plastic blanket, “I’ll finish the contract later, Hannibal.”

Hannibal left, BA trailing behind, looking backwards over his shoulder at the two taller men, ‘Hannibal, the fool’s getting worse.”

Hannibal nodded, “A lot happened for him, in the last month. Give him time.”

 

About an hour later, Hannibal went back out, to check on the two. Face was still sitting against the wall, but Murdock had laid down in his lap, head on his right hip, curled up under the shiny blanket. He didn’t sit up, but he smiled, and turned his head, when he noticed Hannibal approaching. 

“Hi, Colonel.”

“Hey, Murdock. Ready to come in?”

Murdock shook his head, and ducked under the blanket entirely. 

Face reached underneath, and rubbed over Murdock’s bony shoulders, avoiding the hurts lower down on his back. Face caught Hannibal’s eye, and Hannibal turned, heading back inside. 

 

About twenty minutes later, the door opened, and Face and Murdock came back in. Face had his arm around Murdock’s waist. Both of them were soaked, despite the plastic blanket and raincoats, and Face looked like his injury was hindering him more than usual...but that could just have been the pilot glued to his side. 

Hannibal got up, and went to the van to grab towels out of the back. BA looked up from working on the engine, glared in Face and Murdock’s general direction, and then looked back at Hannibal, “this ain’t right.”

“I know, but he’ll get better.”

“Not the fool–he ain’t never been right, and that don’t matter. Us hiding. How long is it gonna be before they’re back to the same damn stuff? We need to take’m out, Hannibal. And they need to pay for what they did to the fool.”

He glared in Murdock’s direction again. 

Hannibal shrugged, got the towels, and went over to the Captain and the Lieutenant. Face took the red towel Hannibal held out, and handed it to Murdock, “hey, pay attention. Dry off.”

Murdock took the towel, slowly, shaking his head as he came back from spacing out. He looked down at the towel in his hands, then grinned, and gripped Face’s jacket, holding him in place with one hand, as he wound the towel around Face’s head in a turban, with the other. 

Face rolled his eyes, at Hannibal, but he was grinning despite himself. 

Hannibal handed him the other towel, and went back to checking the newspaper for leads. When he looked back up ten minutes later, finishing the section, he saw Face just getting into his sleeping bag, Murdock sitting on top of the one beside him, still dripping, the towel in his lap. Face turned over, and gripped the side of Murdock’s bag, just with one hand, before laying his head down on the cushion made of dirty clothes stuffed in a pillowcase, and closing his eyes. 

Five minutes later, Murdock was screaming, head in his hands. 

Twenty seconds after that, he was flanked by BA and Face, BA’s bejeweled hand holding a fistful of his t-shirt, Murdock’s face in Face’s chest, pinned to the floor by the two men while he thrashed, so he wouldn’t hurt himself. It probably didn’t help him figure out where he was.

Face looked up, and Hannibal guessed that as soon as Murdock was back, the lieutenant would be expressing the same need to strike back as BA. 

Hannibal set down the newspaper.

Murdock yelled, again, in something that wasn’t Vietnamese, and definitely wasn’t English.

“Murdock, you’re okay. You’re with us. Can you hear me?” Face tried to get him to look, but he refused to open his eyes, and promptly pushed his head back into Face’s stomach, making him grunt when pressure hit the still healing area. 

Then, quietly, “...Carlo?”

“No, fool, it’s BA and Face. Who the heck is Carlo?”

Murdock sat up, abruptly, attacking Face’s shirt. Face let him push him down, and tear it open, button threads snapping and letting their charges skitter away in all directions. Murdock stared down, and, hands trembling violently, touched the pink, raw scar from a month before. 

“Murdock, I’m okay. Can you look at me, up here? I promise, I’m okay.”

“You never stopped staring. Blood all over you, all over everything, kept staring.”

“No, I don’t think so. Murdock, look at me.”

Murdock screwed his eyes shut, “don’t wanna see you starin’. Billy’s bad enough.”

“I’m not Carlo. It’s Face, not Carlo. Lieutenant Peck. Templeton.”

Slowly, Murdock opened one eye, then the other. He swallowed, both hands still pressed to Face’s skin. Face gently gripped his hands, “easy. Okay? Keep looking at me, alright?”

Murdock nodded, slowly, glancing from the Lieutenant’s face, to their hands, and back up. 

BA got to his feet, and walked a couple paces away, stopping and watching from a distance. 

“You’re warm.”

Face nodded, squeezing Murdock’s hands, a little, “uh-huh. And you’re freezing. God, why aren’t you shivering?”

“Don’t feel it.”

“Lay down?”

Murdock nodded, letting Face pull him onto an unzipped sleeping bag, shoulders still trembling, not letting go of Face for a single second. 

Face laid down, and Murdock followed suit, staring with unsettling intensity at the lieutenant. 

Face sat up a little, enough to zip the sleeping bag. It looked like a tight fit, but Murdock didn’t seem to mind, clinging bodily to his friend. 

BA went back to working on the van, shaking his head. He looked angry, which Hannibal translated as upset. 

Murdock cried, for a long time, starting to shiver and chatter when he warmed up enough to regain the instinct. That he had been that seriously hypothermic explained some of the confusion...but not all of it, and didn’t explain why he had felt such a strong compulsion to be outside in the cold in the first place.

 

“Murdock.”

Murdock opened his eyes, yawning, “mmm?”

“Before BA and Face come back, what happened after the crash, in that year before you were transferred to my unit?”

Murdock blinked, and sat up, looking around, seeing that Face, BA and the van were gone. He rubbed his eyes, and leaned forward, arms crossed over his knees, resting his chin on his forearm, just above the bandages on his wrists, looking up at Hannibal from below. 

“We were downed by rocket fire, stuck in a tree. When I got down, everybody on the ground was dying. I found Billy, his eyes’d popped out from when he fell, I guess. He was suffering, but he stayed with me. Everybody died, of their injuries, or dehydration–I was hurt too bad to go anywhere, get help, or even water. I couldn’t even get back up to Carlo, watched the birds and stuff eating at him in the trees.”

“I guess I went a little off after that. They started giving me suicide missions, pickin’ people up with just one crewmember to do the lift, where they thought we’d probably get dead, but couldn’t just leave people without trying. I was glad to have those missions. Only trouble was, I kept comin’ back. I didn’t want to, but I wasn’t just gonna let all the men we picked up die because I wanted to be done with it. Eventually somebody noticed I was doin’ crazy things with a chopper, to get out of those places alive, and sent me to you.

“Not seein’ men dying every day, not smellin’ blood and rot all day, that helped. Fighting back better’n anyone else, against them that killed Carlo ‘n Billy...that helped more. 

Murdock sighed, sitting straighter, and crossing his legs instead of hugging them, “then you three got arrested. They put me back on medical flights. I only lasted another couple months. Let them get me, after the medic flying with me got shot. I went down on purpose. Tiny cell, couldn’t hardly breathe. I don’t remember leaving there, just came to in a hospital, they said it was about six months later. I think it might’a been ‘cause they told me you guys escaped.

“And, what happened yesterday...Face...he’s not anything like Carlo. Sure, they’re both pretty, but Carlo was real quiet, never knew what to say. But if you could get’m to smile, relax, like... except I think Face is a little like that, if he ever takes a thing seriously. Sometimes, that’s enough, if I’m confused to start with–‘s what happened last night.”

“Who was Carlo?”

“Somebody I was real close to.”

Hannibal tilted his head. 

Murdock didn’t elaborate.

Hannibal left it alone. 

 

Breakfast consumed at a voracious rate, Murdock and BA started cleaning up, while Face went back to work on the contract forgery. Murdock bent down, to pick up a piece of sausage form the ground, and ended up on his knees, gasping. 

BA stood over him, “what’s wrong with you, fool?”

“Back hurts...sorry, gimme a minute...”

BA shook his head, “let me look.”

Murdock looked up at the bigger man, then nodded, slowly, and let BA help him out of his jacket, both kneeling on the floor. 

From where Hannibal stood, watching, he could see the bloodstains where his wounds had soaked through the thin white undershirt. BA helped Murdock get it over his head without too much pulling across his back, and moved to look at his back. Bruises and stark ribs, criss-crossed by burns and oozing cuts that had yet to heal, or even really close properly.

One of the cuts in particular, a long one crossing from the left shoulder blade across the spine, looked angry and still bloody. 

“Why didn’t you get anyone to take care of this?” BA sounded angry, but was exceedingly gentle in touching Murdock’s back, checking the less obvious hurts. 

“Didn’t...” Murdock signed, and craned his neck to look at Face, who was out of earshot, then continued, “didn’t want Faceman to see...”

BA shook his head, and gripped Murdock’s arm, pulling him to his feet, “whatever. Come over here, I’ll clean it for you.”

Murdock nodded, mutely, and followed BA to sit by the doorway, in the better light. Hannibal got the first aid kit, and brought it over, crouching beside the two men. 

Closer up, it looked worse. There was clearly some amount of infection in any one of the wounds, but the big one especially was oozing a mixture of blood and pus. He realized the smell might have contributed to setting Murdock off the night before. 

Murdock leaned forward, bracing himself with his palms to the concrete, head down. Hannibal handed BA the squirt bottle of distilled water, and BA started carefully cleaning the worst wound. Murdock trembled, a little, by the time they finished, but it seemed to just be from the pain, he was still with them. 

Hannibal left BA to bandage, and went back to the map he had been examining. As he walked away, he heard, quietly, “you get hurt again, you come to me, fool.”

He glanced back, and saw Murdock leaned his head against BA’s shoulder, and BA didn’t push him off. 

 

Murdock laid still on the floor, Faceman working on the forgery, beside him. He must have made some noise, because Face had come over, and sat down beside him, as he slept. Now, Murdock was waking up, and was more than a little happy to find his friend beside him. 

Face’s hip was against his shoulder, as the smaller man worked, cross-legged, hunched over his project with some intensity. Murdock smiled, and buried his head in the pillow, avoiding breathing in too much, since it was stuffed with dirty laundry. 

They needed to go to the laundromat. 

Beside him, he could hear Billy’s tail slapping on the ground. He swallowed. 

Dirty laundry and Billy wagging, a man who made him buzz sitting beside him. 

He screwed his eyes shut, and tried to fight off the memory-hallucination, but it was too intense, and he lost before he could even really muster a fight. 

Carlo sitting beside him, as Murdock laid on his bunk, Billy on the floor to their right, wagging and watching them. Murdock stretched an arm across Carlos’s lap, displacing the laundry he was sorting, as he pulled the other man bodily closer to himself, and wrapped around him. 

“James...” Carlo laughed, and stopped what he was doing, “if I don’t sort this, you’re going to end up with my pants, and then you’ll just look silly.”

“That’s your own damn fault.”

“That I’m short?”

“Yes. Be taller, then we can forget about laundry entirely.”

Carlo laughed, “uh-huh.”

Murdock buried his face in his friend’s leg, “besides, I’m in your pants often enough...”

Carlo shoved at him, laughing. Billy barked, and wagged, and jumped up on the cot, knocking the two piles of dirty laundry to the floor. 

“Billy!”

Murdock laughed, and turned over, playing with the dog’s ears, and letting him lick his face, his eyes bright with affection and never-ceasing energy. 

“Stop it, that tickles!”

Face turned, “what, Murdock?”

Murdock blinked, and looked up at Face, for a long moment. Then he shook his head, “they were blue.” 

“What were?” 

“Billy’s eyes. I remembered. They were blue.”


	2. Chapter 2

“Hey, Murdock...how much medicine do you know? You must have picked up something, from Carlo or at the VA?”

“Uh, some.”

“Enough to pass for a doctor to somebody that doesn’t know very much?”

“I suppose, yeah.”

“Then I think we’ve got ourselves a plan.”

Face raised his eyebrows, “what is it, then?”

“The interrogator. He was sick, yellow as a banana. He had to be getting medical attention somewhere. And we’ve got his name, and that he played for some team called the bears,” Hannibal held up the lighter, the engraving still visible despite its violent trip across the rough floor of the cell, a week before.

“You think it’s enough?” asked Murdock, “that sounds like it’ll still take a long time to track down.”

“It’ll take weeks. We ain’t got weeks,” interjected BA. 

“Why not? There’s no hurry, they don’t know we’re coming after them. We have the time to plan and take them out for good, if we do it right.”

Face nodded, “Hannibal’s right. They’re too professional to just take down through brute force,” he looked at Murdock, almost pained, “as much as I’d like to kick them where it hurts as soon as possible..I think we should wait...”

Murdock shrugged, seemingly oblivious to Face’s distress, as he played with miniature Etch-a-sketch that had appeared mysteriously after BA had gone out for milk.

 

Face walked over to the sleeping bags. Murdock had conked out shortly after the meeting, looking a little pale. He was still there, now, curled up almost entirely in one of the bags, up to the brim of his hat, which propped the poofy cover up so he could breathe. One bare foot stuck out at the bottom. 

Face crouched, and wiggled Murdock’s big toe, “hey, Murdock. You awake?”

Murdock pulled the sleeping bag down to his chin with two fingers, peering blearily up with a sleepy smile on recognizing who was bothering him, “am now. What’s up, Faceman?”

“You doin’ okay?”

Murdock nodded, “BA helped me clean stuff, it’s healing fine since then.”

“I don’t really mean that, though I’m glad to hear it’s healing. Are you going to be okay on this? You’ve been having a hard time recently, and I wanted to ask...”

Murdock nodded, “guys hurt you and Hannibal, ‘n kept BA hostage. I’ll get through.”

“It’s not that I don’t trust you, because I know you’ve always got my back, no matter what you’re going through. But I’m just worried...about you being okay. I know you’d never let us down, but I don’t want you to put yourself through something that will be more than you can handle.”

“I’ll be fine, Faceman. I’d be worse if I wasn’t helping. Makes a difference, doin’ something useful.”

“Okay, as long as you’re sure.”

Murdock nodded. 

“But you’ve got to promise me something.”

Murdock’s eyes widened, “anything, Faceman.”

“You’ll come to me, next time it’s too much. You let me help you. You don’t try and fight it alone in the cold just ‘cause you don’t want anyone bothered by you having trouble.”

Murdock swallowed, expression changing to one less innocent, and far more serious, “I won’t promise that–two reasons why. I don’t always know to ask for help, it hits too fast sometimes. And... if I’m havin’ a bad dream, or don’t know where exactly I am, that’s one thing. That’s the not-so-ugly side of it. An’ I don’t ever want you to see the ugly bits.”

“But...how can I help you if you don’t let me see...”

“You’re too important, Temp. BA, Hannibal, they’d freak out, and I could deal with it. It’d be awful, but worse things’ve happened. I don’t think I could take it if you...”

“What could be so bad...?”

“‘s not bad, like you’re thinking. It’s wrong, and it’s twisty, and it’s bits ‘o me that haven’ been around in a long time, comin’ out to play, if I don’ know it’s a time when they’re supposed to be gone.”

“Murdock, there’s no part of you that I’m not okay with.”

“You don’ know that. You haven’t known me forever. Just seems that way.”

“I *know you, even if I haven’t been with you forever. And all of us did things we don’t like to look back on. It was a war, it was awful, and awful things were done on all sides. There’s things I did you don’t know about, but I know you understand how they would have happened. Just like I’d understand for you.”

“I don’t know if it’s ‘cause you’re wrong, or ‘cause I’m wrong in the head, but I don’t believe that they’re the same.”

“...okay. But if it’s not that, and you think to...can you please let me help? You being alone if you’re hurting bothers me.”

Murdock stared at him, for a weirdly long moment, then nodded, and turned over, the sleeping bag pulling away to show his too-slender frame, and the yellowing bruises and finally-closing cuts. He moaned, quietly, and turned back over, bunching the sleeping bag under his neck, trying to find a comfortable position without using the pillows, which had set him off more than once from their smell. 

Face laid down beside him, as he tossed, reaching with one hand to grip his shoulder, “calm down. Come here, okay?”

He paused, then, hesitantly, nodded, and laid his head on Face’s chest, right over his heart, as Face laid on his back, head on one of the stuffed pillowcases. Face pulled Murdock’s arm across his middle, and wrapped his arm around Murdock’s shoulders. 

Murdock’s was heavy–though less so than he should have been–and warm against Face’s side, his hair bunching up on Face’s shirt, his fingers twisting a little bit of the fabric, as he laid still, eyes open, staring ahead. Face moved his hand, combing Murdock’s hair a little so it wasn’t sticking up in so many strange directions, “promise?”

Murdock fisted his hand against Face’s belly, burying his face, huffing a distressed sigh into Face’s sternum. 

“I...I’ll do my best,” mumbled Murdock, finally, muffled in Face’s partially open button-down, the yellow one, still missing its buttons from a few days before.

Face turned his head, a little, pressing his nose and mouth into Murdock’s hair, “okay.”

He closed his eyes. He could feel Murdock’s heartbeat through his body, his respiration against Face’s own chest, warmth that had nothing to do with body heat–and everything to do with two warm bodies so immediately together–flooded through his front, rising in his cheeks. 

 

When Face woke up, Murdock was no longer beside him, though the sleeping bag had been tucked firmly around him in lieu of his friend’s presence. 

He sat up. BA had Murdock in a headlock, Murdock was laughing, Hannibal was looking on, grinning. Face got to his feet, his ribs still hindering him more than he would admit, and walked to join them, across the warehouse. 

Murdock grinned manically up at him, bent almost double by BA’s grip, “hey, Faceman! BA doesn’t think I should practice being a doctor on him. Crazy, right?”

“Dang fool’s gonna kill me!”

Face chuckled, and sat down on the broken chair to watch. 

He was vaguely aware of Hannibal watching him, but it didn’t really enter his attention. 

 

Hannibal watched the Lieutenant. He had looked like it hurt him, getting up–and waking up, actually, when he realized he was no longer being used as a pillow by their Captain.

Murdock, on the other hand, seemed crazier than he had in a while...which could only be an improvement. He was learning that a serious, normal Murdock was not the good sign that one would have assumed.

...what had happened, before their last job? As badly as the mission had gone, it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, so what had happened?

They had had a good week, beforehand. Actually managed to relax, a little, went camping for a few days, came back, went out to dinner, then heard about a new job, the one that had resulted in their capture and the ongoing fight against the *LPA. 

Hannibal couldn’t remember the last time they’d had a break like that. 

...maybe that was it. He’d seen it before, men holding out as long as they needed to for their unit, or just to survive, then breaking down as soon as things were safe. 

Maybe those few days of calm had caused this as much as Face’s injury and the torture they had gone through. Or, maybe on a greater scale, Murdock was beginning to feel stable enough to start facing his demons. Instead of going off into another place or person when something bothered him, he was just...being bothered, and dealing with it, however well or badly it went.

 

He stood at the end of the hallway, staring at the floor map pinned to a bulletin board. Room 403...down the hall, to the left. He turned, and started walking. He passed a doctor, and a man in a suit with a stethoscope, both of them untying their surgical masks as they walked, and turned the corner. He stepped purposefully into the room, boots loud on the tile floor. 

A nurse was restocking the cabinets, as the thin man slept. 

“Oh, I’m sorry, only one visitor at a time–“

Decker barely had time to turn his head, before the man who had been lurking behind the curtain struck him in the gut. 

He got off one, two, shots before the boot caught his belly, and he slammed into the corner of a metal cabinet, momentarily unable to even breathe in. He had missed, he saw, as the man bore down on him. He struggled to sit, tried to stand, the man, former Colonel Alec Hurst, picked up the gun that he had dropped when he was kicked. The nurse had fled, the door opened, the man in the suit, and a disappointingly scrawny security guard burst in. 

The security guard was down in seconds, and Decker didn’t have much more hope for the man in the suit, bushy mustache twitching and brown eyes wide. 

...familiar eyes. 

The man in the suit, the former Captain, tackled Hurst, wrestling the gun from him. It went off twice more, and one of the shots hit the oxygen tank on the wall. Murdock must have noticed, he started trying to force Hurst towards it. Decker struggled to his feet, and rammed Hurst from behind, shoving him close. Murdock fired the gun, into the wall, still in Hurst’s hand. 

Fake mustache on fire from the resulting explosion, Murdock struggled to contain the stunned but angry former Colonel. Decker tried to do the same, couldn’t sit up without tremendous pain, looked down, saw a piece of something in his chest, laid still. 

Murdock was losing. He tried again, but couldn’t make it upright. He yelled into his radio, just as he looked up to see a gun pointed at his head, and Murdock in the restraints that had been on the yellow man, before. 

The yellow man walked out, slowly, clearly ill, body wasting, but face triumphant. Decker felt a pang of shock hit his gut, as he recognized who the yellow man was. 

Murdock was practically spitting, as he fought the restraints. 

“That looks bad. Hey, doctor, what do you think?” Hurst leaned over him, grinning, then moved to the side, so Murdock could see the chunk of what had probably been part of the oxygen tank, in his side. 

Murdock stared for a minute, face blanking out. Then he swallowed, “I think he needs medical attention. I think if he dies, it will be very bad for you. You have no way out of here, 

“It’ll be worse for him, though. And yes I do...I’ve got three hostages–that’s three ways out. Now if you don’t want to become a victim of redundancy, do as I tell you.”

Murdock nodded, slowly, eyes blazing, and let Hurst undo his restraints. 

The crazy man’s hands were shaking, but not so badly he couldn’t still them, as he knelt to Decker’s right side, carefully tearing away the remains of the shirt surrounding the injury. 

“What were you doing here?” asked Murdock, barely audible, as he worked with surprising presence.

Decker swallowed, “your friends are not the only ones I’m trying to catch. Do you know what you’re doing?”

Murdock nodded, checking the wound. Brown eyes met his, “I will help you, if I can.” 

“Can you take it out?”

He looked like someone had punched him, but just swallowed, and shook his head, before moving quickly on to the guard. 

“This man needs surgery,” said the pilot, after a minute. 

“It’s just a bump on the head.”

“His left pupil is blown.”

“So?”

“His brain is swelling. Depending on how fast, and how bad, and whether there was other damage, he could be dead in ten minutes, or as long as a day. But he will die without treatment, and he will die soon.”

“What kind of doctor are you? You know all about,” Hurst waved his hand at his head, “or you just guessing?”

Murdock stood, “I’m a neurologist specializing in neuropsychology. So yes, I now all about,” Murdock waved his hand at his own head. 

It was a smart lie. If anyone knew how to talk about head problems, it would be a man who had been institutionalized for fifteen years. Though the reaction in provoked in Hurst left him with a strange taste. 

“Were leaving. We’ll leave him here. Good enough, Doc?”

Murdock nodded. 

 

Murdock sat across from him in the back of the truck, head down, twiddling his thumbs. 

“I know you work with the A Team. Are they coming for you?”

“No. They won’t check in for another day.”

“Can you get in contact with them?”

“I won’t. I won’t turn them in to you to save myself.”

“I’m not trying to catch them,. Today, I’m just trying to save my men.”

Murdock scoffed, quietly. 

“My unit is going to come after me. They won’t understand what they’re about to go up against. They’ll get massacred.”

“They know who Hurst is. They’d have to be pretty doggone stupid to go up against him not prepared.”

“They don’t know who he was with. The man in the hospital, they can’t know he was working for the LPA, because I didn’t, until I saw him walking out of the room. I thought that it was going to be Hurst, I only had the initials.”

“Who is it?”

“Anderson Hendrick. He’s a biochemist, he developed chemical weapons and torture drugs during the war before disappearing in ‘72. If he’s working with Hurst’s group...my men don’t stand a chance, they won’t know what to look for...”

Murdock just shook his head, “I can’t take that risk. I’m sorry. I will help you find a way to warn your men, and I will try and help stop Hurst and Hendrick, but I would rather die than betray my unit, Colonel.”

“Do you understand what he has the capacity to make? If he’s working with Hurst, Hurst is probably planning a major terrorist attack. The kind of damage a chemical weapon can do...you can’t understand–”

“I’ve seen it, Colonel. In ‘71, I was asked by the CIA to disperse a gas via chopper, over an enemy camp. I only saw it from above, but that was more than enough. I understand what the consequences could be. But I can’t trust you, and if we fail, the A-Team may be the only people who can stop them, which won’t happen if you turn them in.”

Murdock finally looked up, and Decker swallowed at the haunted expression, and unfocused eyes. 

“Are you going to lose it?”

“No. Not yet.”

“Then I’m gonna take this out, while you’re sane enough to deal with it.”

“If you pull that out, I’m gonna be gone.”

“I think you can do it.”

Murdock shook his head, opening his mouth, but Decker had already yanked. 

No blood spurted, nothing really happened, except an overwhelming wave of pain, and a strangled, feral sound. The sound did not come from Decker. 

He tried to start dealing with the newly open wound himself, fingers shaking so badly he couldn’t grip the shirt he tried to press against it, but steady, slender hands interrupted his fumbling, “stop it. You’re going to make it worse.”

Murdock was dead white, but his hands were still and skilled, as he cleaned and packed the wound best as was possible in a rumbling truck barrelling down a rocky road. 

 

Murdock screamed in the night. Decker kicked him awake, not able to reach him otherwise. He woke and stared, and shuddered in a corner, and clearly had not a goddamned clue who Decker was, or where they were. Eventually, in what just had to be a dream, Decker convinced him to come lay down beside him, and huddle up, holding on until his fingers strained for whatever shreds of sanity he could pull together out of a little bit of stability and comfort. 

Then, just as suddenly as the screaming had started , Murdock let go, sat up, and said, “oh.”

He laid down again, no longer touching, but still less than half a foot away, “sorry.”

“...it’s okay.”

“Who’s in your unit? Who’s the smartest guy?”

“Alexander–Crane.”

Murdock turned over, staring at him. 

“What?”

“You never called a man by his name ‘s long as you’ve been chasing us.”

“So? He’s my second in command.”

“Yeah...but you were surprised you called him that too.”

“I’m worried. I’m worried my unit will be dead within the hour. Yeah, I called Alexander by his first name, yeah, I don’t do that, so yeah I tried to cover it up. If he’s not dead already, he could get that way any minute. And he’s too damned naive–he won’t think of what they might do–he won’t think...” this was humiliating. He was losing it in front of an enemy, and a crazy one at that. 

“Roberts Drive.”

“What?”

“There’s a payphone on Roberts Drive. If we can get a call to that phone, they’re set up to trace the location.”

“They–the A Team?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened to not betraying your unit?”

“A man as mean as you doesn’t get messed up like this ‘less you got no choice. And you’d have a choice, unless somethin’ was eatin’ at you that was just so close to your insides you couldn’t stop it. And that’s the kinda thing that makes a man make weird choices. I might be wrong, and it might bite us all in the rear real soon, but it’s enough for me to give you a chance to be doin’ the right thing.”

 

A thirty second phone call accompanied by a rifle butt to what seemed like every soft place possible was all he could do. He hoped it was long enough to trace. Then he didn’t really care about anything, for a while. 

The next thing he really knew, was hands tying what was less an arm and more a massive lump of pain, to something stiff. Had Murdock found a stick...he opened his eyes. A smooth, metal and grey plastic splint, and clean bandages. His swimming vision found white hair and blue eyes, above. 

“What...” he croaked, “what...”

“It’s okay. Stay still while I get this stabilised.”

“Where’s...”

“Murdock’s with Face. Well, kind of.”

Decker turned his head to look in the direction Smith had nodded. 

He couldn’t see more than a blur, but he could hear soft moans, and quiet, tired, repeated, “shhhh....shhhh....” 

“He lost it?”

“After. He lost it after everything was settled.”

“They’re...down?”

“Not yet. Hurst and Hendrick are still out there, we just got most of their grunts. Murdock said to get ahold of Captain Crane–I got him on the phone, and he’s on his way. We’re going to leave you here when he gets close, until we’re satisfied you’re not going back on what you told Murdock.”

“I won’t... they’re too danger...ous... can’t put...”

“Can’t put your men in that kind of danger, I know, Murdock said. You’re going soft, Decker. I’m almost disappointed.”

Decker tried to hit him. He really tried, very hard, multiple times, but his arm wouldn’t...and it hurt....

He woke up with a brown smudge instead of a pale one over him, and groaned, before throwing up all over his second in command. Alexander rubbed his back, firmly, “easy, Colonel.”

The warm hand on his back meant more than it ever should have. It was embarrassing. But not embarrassing enough for him to try and make it stop. 

Dammit. Maybe Smith wasn’t entirely wrong. 

And *that was *humiliating. 

 

Hannibal opened the door to the van, climing in the back, with Face and Murdock. Face sat on the floor, Murdock huddled up against him, clutching at Face’s jacket, the muscles and tendons in his hands straining, as he shivered and shuddered and twitched, the moans faded into terror-suffocated silence. 

Hannibal crouched beside them, “hey. Murdock, can you hear me? Captain?”

“Yes...”

“We’ve got an impending terrorist attack, and Decker’s out of commission. If you can come back...it would be really helpful.”

“Yessir.”

Murdock pried his fingers open, and sat up. 

By the look on his face and the eyes that were fixed on something twenty feet and fifteen years away, he wasn’t really back with them. 

“Murdock?”

“Yessir.”

“Do you have any idea where you are?

“No, sir, not at all. But I’ll do my best to help anyway.”

“We’re going to need air support. Think you can handle flying? Decker’s getting a military chopper.”

Mudock met his eyes, lost and unseeing, but absolutely solid, “yessir.”

“Face’ll be with you, on the ground.”

Murdock nodded, paused, and frowned.

Hannibal nodded past him, Murdock turned around, looking at Face, “oh, okay.”

“Can you help BA navigate?” Hannibal jerked his thumb at the front seat. 

Murdock nodded, got up, and climbed up front. 

Hannibal looked at Face, who looked more than a little upset, as he whispered, “he didn’t have a clue who I was, did he?”

Hannibal shook his head, “I wouldn’t worry about it, too much. Give him some time.”

Face nodded, but he looked deeply bothered.

“Face.”

“Huh?”

“He’ll notice if you’re upset. Even if he doesn’t understand why, he’ll pick up on it.”

“Yeah, but... he didn’t even recognize me...” Face rubbed at his forehead, roughly. 

Murdock turned around, clearly still oblivious to his role in their whispers, “hey, uh...Sir...”

“Yeah, Murdock? And it’s Hannibal. Hannibal Smith.”

Murdock nodded, “right. Smith. Hannibal. Okay, right. Anyway...uh...”

“What’s up?” asked Face, leaning forward, and briefly gripping Murdock’s sleeve. Murdock looked down at the well manicured hand, then up at Face, smiling broadly, before turning to look at Hannibal again. 

“I told the other Colonel this, but I one time worked with people using those weapons the mean guys are making. I would know what they looked like, and probably how to disarm them safely.”

Hannibal looked as surprised as Face felt, “when did you use chemical weapons?”

Murdock shrugged, “sometime? I don’t know. Just remember I did.”

He frowned, “and it wasn’t pretty.”

Hannibal shook his head, “I wouldn’t expect it would have been. What–“

Murdock was frowning more, now, expression glazed.

“Fudge...”

“You remembering?” Face tugged on Murdock’s arm, a little, “you okay?”

“Feel sick.”

“You going to throw up?”

Murdock shook his head, but he didn’t look like he was sure. 

“It didn’t bother me. After seein’ and smelling so many of our own boys shot up and dying, and Carlo bein’ dead and all eaten by the birds...seeing those men on the ground writhing and dying and hearin’ them screaming till they choked...it didn’t bother me. That’s wrong, and twisty, and makes me feel sick to know, that I just didn’t get bothered by doin’ that. I’m a hypocrite, blamin’ the man who made the chemicals when I used them without remorse.”

“Shut up, Fool. You did what you were ordered. Now come help me read this map, I can’t ‘cause I’m driving.”

Murdock quickly turned, and looked intently down at the map. 

Hannibal looked at Face, and met his gaze, equally stunned as Hannibal felt. 

“That’s what he meant, by twisty dark bits...” Face mused. 

 

They slept in the van, that night; BA on his back in the driver’s seat, Hannibal curled up shotgun. Before he went to sleep, he leaned over, and looked into the back. Murdock had glued himself to the wall of the van, knees drawn up to his chest. Face sat against the back of one of the seats, watching him. 

“Face. Go to sleep.”

Face nodded, slowly, and laid down. 

The noises in the night were not pleasant. By the time Hannibal woke to them, Face was already wrapped around the pilot, preventing him from hurting himself as he thrashed and yelled. 

“They hurt him, let me go!”

“I know, I know Carlo got hurt, but that was a long time ago. You’re not there anymore–Murdock!”

“Not Carlo! Let go!”

“Not Carlo, then who? Who’s hurt, Murdock?”

“Temp! They hurt Temp! Let me go, I will punch you in the face!”

“Murdock, do you have any idea who I am?”

“No, and I don’t care, let go!”

Face did, and Mudock heaved the van door open, stumbling out into the night. Hannibal and Face followed him, BA having somehow slept through the yelling. 

Murdock stood, panting, wild-eyed, in the cold, dark air. 

He turned, staring at them, and swallowed, “where is this?”

“Los Angeles. Do you remember what you said yesterday?”

Murdock leaned down, bracing himself on his knees, as he watched them, “I...that I would help.”

Hannibal stepped towards him, and he only flinched a little, so Hannibal kept moving, until his hand rested on the Captain’s arm. He was sweating profusely, body hot. He wasn’t feverish, just worked up. 

“Do you still mean that?”

Murdock nodded, staring at Face, “I do...but I don’t know why. Who...dammit...”

He sat down, abruptly, head in his hands. 

Face sat down beside him, “mind if I sit with you?”

Murdock shook his head, miserably, “don’t mind.”

Face sat in silence, about half a foot away from Murdock’s side. He looked up, “Hannibal, I think maybe we should sleep outside?”

Hannibal nodded. 

Murdock looked up, “Hannibal. It’s not really Hannibal, it’s John.”

Hannibal nodded, “that’s right.”

Murdock’s face fell, “that’s...all I’ve got.”

“That’s okay,” Face gripped his shoulder, briefly, then let go, “it’s okay.”

Murdock looked at him, abjectly, “you’re important. You’re really, really important. I know that. You’re like the most important thing ever, and I don’t....that’s not okay. How could that be okay?” his voice was starting to crack. 

Face wrapped his arm around Murdock’s shoulders, hauling him close, which he didn’t resist in the least, “because even when you haven’t got a clue where you are, or who we are, or possibly even who you are, you apparently still know we’re close.”

Murdock smooshed his face in Face’s chest, desperately attempting to physically meld his body into the smaller man’s. 

“I’ll get the sleeping bags,” announced Hannibal, and went back into the van. 

He didn’t come out for a long while.

 

The next morning, Hannibal opened his eyes at sunrise, despite his interrupted sleep. He was the first one awake. Murdock and Face were in one sleeping bag, Murdock sleeping with his back towards the van, half on his stomach, Face entangled with him from behind and a little bit on top, body firmly entwined around his friend. Hannibal couldn’t remember the last time he saw either of them sleeping so soundly, completely dead to the noises of a city beginning to wake. 

 

Murdock seemed fine, when he woke. Relatively. He called Hannibal the wrong name, called Face a series of random descriptors, and seemed completely at a loss as to how to address BA, but he was acting like himself. When they got out of the van at the airfield, he grinned, and started making oratorical love to the chopper, as he ran around it, running his hands over the sides and the instruments at the front. 

He turned to yell to Hannibal, “Apaches aren’t even in Army service yet!”

Decker stood, barely, watching. Crane stood beside him, visible itching to steady his wavering boss, but didn’t move to do so. 

Hannibal approached them, “ready?”

Decker nodded, “let’s start.”

Crane left the Colonel, going to stand beside Murdock, asking him something inaudible from where Hannibal stood. Murdock replied enthusiastically, grabbing onto Face’s arm, and bowing Crane towards the gunner’s seat. 

Decker watched, then turned to Hannibal, “it takes pilots over a year to learn how to fly one of these.”

“Give him an hour.”

Murdock donned the helmet, with a small green disk in front of his right eye, and mounted up into the cockpit. Ten minutes later, the chopper was hovering, following lines laid out on the ground.

Decker, sitting on the ground–how he had gotten there would remain unmentioned–looked up at Hannibal. Hannibal grinned, “and you wonder why you can’t catch us.”

“Don’t push it, Smith.”

Hannibal just kept grinning. 

Their strike would take place at night, when the more important ability of the chopper Decker had gotten them would come into play–the TAD/PNVS which had both heat sensing and night vision mounted to the front of the chopper, following the head movements of the pilot or gunner through sensors in the sophisticated helmets. It would allow them to accurately target and track Hurst and Hendrick where they had hunkered down, in the rough, rocky hills outside the city. At least, they hoped they were still there. If they had moved back in, for their attack, it might already be too late. 

Murdock would keep practicing, but first, they needed lunch. Hannibal radioed for him to land, and he and Crane got out, walking over. Murdock hadn’t looked so happy in months. When he saw Face, he bounded over, abandoning his rambling exposition of every technical detail of the chopper to grab his friend, “Face!”

Face’s expression, at being recognized and hugged, was only momentary, as a second after Murdock reached him, the pilot yelled, in surprise, and started to run backwards. Face gripped the back of his jacket, “Murdock, stay here. What’s wrong?”

Murdock turned his head, looking over his shoulder at his friend, “don’ you see them?”

Face shook his head, “see who? Or what?”

“Them, over there?” Murdock waved his hand at an empty corner of the airfield. 

Face shook his head again, “nobody there. Sorry.”

Murdock sighed, and leaned into Face’s grip, “oh.”

“What you seeing now, fool?” asked BA, reaching them, having stayed locked in the van the whole time the chopper was in the air. 

“Dead men screaming, silent. All burned up by the gas...and rotted, after.”

“That’s...horrific,” said Crane, unhelpfully. 

Murdock turned, “no kiddin’.” 

Despite his reply, he seemed somewhat pacified by Crane’s comment. 

Face and BA walked towards the van with Murdock. Hannibal stayed, standing with Crane and Decker. 

“He’s getting worse...is he gonna make it?” asked Crane, edging subtly to stand maybe three inches from his swaying boss’s arm. 

“I think he sees that kind of thing all the time. I don’t think that means he’s getting worse.”

“And not knowing who any of you were yesterday? Peck mentioned it to Crane,” commented Decker, explaining after Hannibal raised an eyebrow. 

“...I don’t know.”

 

Start from something simple, something that you know. He looked down at himself. Tan pants, a t-shirt, chucks. Definitely civilian. He’d worn boots, not chucks, even in off hours. Definitely not in the army anymore. Army airfield, though. No, not army airfield. Civilian airfield with some military aircraft. 

Apache. AH-64 Apache Longbow. Commissioned 1972, production early 80's. No military insignia, and not a military paint job, even if it was supposed to be covert. Manufacturer, fresh off the line. Rotting men, screaming without sound with liquified throats behind it. Nauseating, but probably not real. Billy rubbing at his shins–hadn’t been around in a while.  
He knelt, scratching behind Billy’s ears, making sure not to get any of the blood from the dog’s eyes and head on his hands–he didn’t want to have to explain that. 

Early 80's. Billy couldn’t really be here. Even if he hadn’t died in the crash, he would have died of old age by now, he was probably ten when Carlo and Murdock had found him. 

Temp knelt beside him, reaching out, to pet Billy too. Murdock leaned against his friend. 

Faceman was here. Temp was really here. He hadn’t died like Carlo, Murdock had seen the healed wound, pink fresh flesh, felt it under his hands. 

He never felt Billy under his hands. 

Where had Billy gone? Temp was petting empty air, now. It looked silly. 

Murdock looked around, briefly, then shook his head, resting it against Temp’s shoulder, “he’s not there anymore.”

“Are the dead men?”

Murdock looked. They weren’t. 

There was just Face, and BA. Further away, there was Hannibal, and Decker and Crane. 

That was it. A helicopter, a team, even if only a temporary one.

Temporary, but real. 

“Murdock?”

“No, they aren’t. They’re gone.” 

“That’s a relief.”“

Decker fell. 

Murdock frowned. Why... Hurst. Hurst and Hendrick. Hurst the awful and mean. Hendrick the torturer, mouth in a slack grin as he made pain in a bucket and gave it out in big dollops and electrocutions. Hurst the kicker. Hendrick the gas man. Hurst the scheming. Hendrick, the fat man, the wasting man, the yellow man. 

Yellow.

“Liver failure, wasting... And Hurst was worried about neurological problems, he reacted weird when I said I was a neurologist. I know Hendrick worked with developing some of the herbicides used during the war, which were mostly dioxins, which cause liver and neurological defects in lower, slower doses than were used to kill the crops. Dioxin is also stored in adipose tissue, fat–he must have gotten enough to get sick, to lose weight, and then the toxins came out to get him. I bet he’s working with a dioxin now, and contaminated Hurst or some of their men, as well. That’s why Hurst reacted so much when I said neurology...”

“Uh...could be.”

Murdock looked up in time to see Temp and BA sharing a blank look. 

“It’s a kind of chemical–it’s not water soluble, it’s not going to be through the pipes, it’s mostly in dirt, what...where would people eat dirt...not eat, breathe...get it on their skin...where would it matter, what’s a public place where people have skin touching ground?”

“...the beach?”

Murdock stared at his friend. Behind Temp, dead, sandy floating, bloated sacks of human bodies littered the dry, dusty airfield. Murdock ignored them. There was no water here. They were not real. 

Billy wagged his tail, at the realization that it was a hallucination. 

Shit. 

“Well...only about fifty miles of beaches in Los Angeles...” said Temp, starting to look a little bit pale.

Shit. 

Shit. 

Shit. 

Fuck. 

“Hannibal!”

 

Black water stretching out into an endless ocean night, waves pressed down by the mighty air, as he flew at speed matched by nothing. 

Eyes unfocused, two in one. 

Over the city, a thousand thousand bodies sleeping, warm in their beds at night, bright heat in the right, over the ghostly black and lights. 

“Captain?” the Captain’s voice buzzed in his ear. 

“Former.”

“Technically you’ve been reinstated for this. You’re not charged with anything, so it made the paperwork simpler.”

 

“Former.”

“...okay. Anyway, turn ten degrees north.”

“Okay.”

Hills rising, rocky crags, scrubby brush. 

Reminded him of a television program. Reminded him of bloody, broken bodies, below. 

He pushed the cyclic forward, and loosened the throttle, flying faster, faster into a bloody night. 

But there was no heat in those hills. 

Nothing but predators and prey. No vicious animals plotting hidden, sick and twisted in head and body and irreparably in heart. 

They had already moved. 

Then, there, at the foothills of the hills, bright lights in darkest night, moving slow and falling, getting up and moving on. Rough terrain and damaged brains had been the people’s saviour, slowing them down enough for them to be found. 

Tipping to glare them down with the cockpit’s single eye, the rotors sliced the vegetation, like the most excessive edge trimmer in history. 

As the blazing lights lit their faces, their eyes shone back, terrified. 

One of them fired with shotgun, at the most advanced attack helicopter in the world. 

He could have laughed, if he could have remembered whose eyes they were. 

All he could see was people, scared. 

Start small. Start from something he knew. Who was his copilot?

“Crane?”

“Yeah, Captain?”

“What do we do now?”

“Radio Richard and Smith, and hold these guys until they get here.”

Right. Terrorists. Beaches. Dead bodies floating in the sea on an airfield. 

“Decker’s first name is Dick?”

“I will seriously kick in the shin you when we get out of this helicopter.”

“Fair enough.”

“He’s not a soft man, or an easy man to like. But he is an honourable one.”

One of the men in front of them tried to run off. Crane fired, several trees feet to the left of him were vaporized. He slunk back to the group. 

The tallest man stood, and Murdock could see that it was Hurst. He was screaming, but others were edging away, not rallying around. Hendrick dragged at him, he kept screaming, spitting and shaking, buffeted by the wind from the rotors. 

“Stand down, Hurst,” announced Crane, through the speakers. At the same time, Murdock heard Hannibal say they were getting close, over the radio. 

Good. Murdock wanted to get home to the welcoming warmth of an awful cot and Carlo’s arm around his waist.

Wait. Nope. Wrong helicopter. 

Wrong. 

He still wanted to get home, though. 

Wait, he wasn’t entirely wrong. There was still probably going to be an arm around his waist, if he wanted it. 

Faceman. Temp. 

He smiled. 

He hadn’t noticed when that happened, he was so out of it. 

He was noticing it now. 

He wasn’t out of it. Well, he was...but while there were people running naked and burning between the men, fleeing the demon spitting gaseous death from the sky, they weren’t there. There was Hurst going mental, and Hendrick trying to contain him. The burning, writhing, dying bodies were not there. 

Hurst grabbed one of the cans, flung it at the chopper. 

It hit one of the blades, was sheared open, had next to no effect. Except then the poison was dispersed in the air, swirled in a deadly hurricane. 

Murdock hurriedly radioed the others to stay away, and to get containment measures, then lifted off, hovering higher, hoping to lessen the dispersal of the chemical. 

Below, the men died. It wasn’t that awful. They didn’t burn, they didn’t blister. They just writhed and died. He couldn’t hear them scream. 

“–Murdock! Captian, are you still with me?”

Crane. 

“Yeah. I’m still here.”

How the hell was he still here?

Hendrick and Hurst were still.. 

He saw them go. The men running between them, fleeing the gas that existed only in the past, fell with them, and disappeared. All dead. All gone. All done. 

Done. 

He had pulled the trigger, Hendrick had made the gun. 

Neither of them were innocent. But Hendrick was gone, and Murdock had had some hand in making him be done, before he could do more harm. 

 

Hannibal stood on the tarmac, as the black helicopter approached. He braced himself against the wind, as it landed, and nodded to Face, both of them ready for Murdock to be utterly gone the minute the engines were shut down. 

The pilot jumped out, before Crane was even unbuckled, running up to Face, grabbing him by the waist, and swinging him around into a hug, face buried in the smaller man’s shoulder. Face, taken off balance and off guard, staggered, then stilled, patting his friend’s back, bewilderedly. 

“Faceman, I saw a pound on the way over here, just a couple blocks that way.”

“Okay.”

“I’m gonna see if they have any dogs.”

“Are you sure? What about Billy?”

“Billy’s been dead for a decade. It’s about time he got some rest.”

“Does the same go for Carlo?”

Murdock pulled back, holding on to both of Face’s shoulders, “Temp, come with me to the pound? Please? I got somethin’ to say, and I’d be easier if we were goin’ somewhere.”

Face nodded, slowly, “okay, after we finish here.”

“You ain’t gonna bring no dog in my van!”

Hannibal left Murdock to charm BA into okaying the dog, trusting Face to find a way for the big man to give in without admitting he was changing his mind, and headed over to start the van. Crane reached him, halfway there, “wait.”

He turned, and looked at the young man. 

“It was a pleasure, Colonel. I hope we’ll be on the same side again, someday.”

“Don’t let your boss hear you say that.”

Crane grinned, and left, to go back to the Army car. 

Hannibal shook his head, smiling, as he got in the van. 

“Smith.”

He turned around, slowly. Decker was sitting in the back, gun to Hannibal’s shoulder. 

“We had a deal.”

“I’m just not taking any risks. This is what I promised you.”

He handed Hannibal a folder, “now get out of town before sundown, and there won’t be any problems.”

Hannibal nodded, gripping the thick pages and smooth cardstock, “pleasure working with you, Decker.”

Decker practically growled, as he left the van. It would have been more intimidating, if he hadn’t had nearly collapsed as soon as he was past the door. 

Hannibal shook his head, smiled, and looked down at the folder. H. M. Murdock, the folder embossed with the seal of the CIA. 

If he could help Murdock sort things out as to what had actually happened, maybe some of the things that had been growing and haunting him more and more over the years could be shrunk back down to size. 

On the other hand, something seemed to have changed already, as he ran back to the van to get his hat, having left it behind in order to wear the chopper helmet, grinning, “me’n Face are goin’ to the pound, we’ll meet you at the warehouse in an hour.”

Hannibal nodded, and watched him go, running past a surly BA. As soon as Murdock passed the jingly man, BA grinned, and shook his head.


End file.
